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Vikrum Aiyer

Obama Tech Policy Advisor

Vikrum Aiyer served as a senior advisor in the Obama Administration and Chief of Staff to the Under Secretary of Commerce, where he helped oversee the U.S. Patent and Trademark system in the U.S. Department of Commerce. Previously he was President Barack Obama’s senior advisor for innovation and manufacturing policy in The White House National Economic Council.

As Chief of Staff, Aiyer served as the principal political and policy advisor to the U.S. undersecretary of commerce for IP, where he coordinated a $3.2B budget, in support of the bureau’s 13,000 employees, to execute the daily operations, policies priorities, and global communications of the president’s intellectual property agenda. In 2016 Aiyer lead a U.S. delegation to Cuba to reset relations between the two nations' IP offices, and separately serves on Vice President Biden's Cancer Moonshot Taskforce, to accelerate progress towards a cure. While at the White House Aiyer also steered investments in several advanced manufacturing technologies including smart fabrics, autonomous vehicles, high performance computing, and next generation semiconductors.

As a former press & communications advisor to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty (D), Aiyer has managed strategic communications campaigns and led speech writing teams for Congress, federal agencies, and trade associations, including the State Department, the White House Initiative on Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders and the Democratic National Conventions in 2012 and 2016. In 2015 Forbes Magazine named Aiyer to the 30 Under 30 list for Law & Policy.